Chapter 11
MY THERAPIST WILL BE HEARING ABOUT THIS
Holly
“It’s not tension. It’s choreographed resentment with a side of pelvic proximity.”
She lay flat on her yoga mat in her rehearsal studio, legs up the wall, breathing through her pre-warmup stretches like she wasn’t being eviscerated by a thousand TikTok edits of her and Nate in that final pose. Hip to hip. Chest to chest. Her expression: fire. His? Starvation.
They were trending, and she felt a twinge of something inconvenient low in her belly as she tried to focus on her breathing.
"You good?" Martin’s too-chipper voice cut through her concentration, followed by the low whirr of a handheld gimbal camera, already rolling.
"I was until I saw someone call our dance 'pre-orgasmic foreplay on national television,'" Holly muttered, not even bothering to look up.
"That one got two million likes in three hours," Martin chuckled. "You're welcome."
"I didn’t say thank you."
From the far end of the room, Nate groaned as he came through the door with two iced lattes, like a horny golden retriever who’d learned her one true weakness was chilled espresso with almond milk.
Holly could feel him looking at her with that quiet, slow burn behind his sunglasses (indoors, of course), like she was the punchline to his favorite dirty joke.
"Morning, sweetheart," he called, voice thick with too much smug and not enough shame.
She didn’t turn her head. Didn’t have to. Her peripheral vision was full of him. Gray sweatpants slung low, like a fucking menace. Pitch-black curls covered with a backwards baseball cap but still damp from something. Towel around his neck like he just finished wrecking his coach’s daughter.
The worst part was that he put the coffees down and started stretching with actual commitment today. Long, lean muscle shifting beneath skin. Obnoxiously graceful for someone who still couldn’t hold a half-beat.
"How does it feel?" he asked from across the room with a swagger that could knock over furniture. "To know the whole internet wants to watch us fuck in a rehearsal closet?"
"Like throwing up in my mouth on repeat," Holly said flatly.
He crouched beside her, all casual testosterone, and tilted his head just enough to see the lock screen of her phone. "#Hate2Hot," he read aloud, tongue lingering on the word hot like he wanted to burn her with it. "Catchy."
She snatched her phone off him with a sigh. "Don’t let it go to your head."
"Too late."
Martin clapped his hands like a deranged circus monkey. "Enough chit-chat, lovebirds! We need more content! More heat! Production’s thrilled. They want cheeky interviews, behind-the-scenes flirting, and maybe a hand-hold or two on the way out of the studio lot today."
"So we’re influencers now," Holly said.
"You're performers," Martin corrected. "And the world’s invested. So give the people what they want."
“You know this is ridiculous, right?” Holly snapped, spinning to face him with all the energy of a dancer whose performance shoes were made of middle fingers. “We’re not reality show porn stars.”
“And yet,” Martin said with a sugary smile that reeked of producer menace, “your contracts explicitly state that you agree to any promotional activities deemed beneficial to the success of the show.”
“Including acting like I’m one orgasm away from falling for him?” she asked, jerking a thumb in Nate’s direction.
“Wait, you’re not?” Nate pretended to look wounded.
“Especially that,” Martin said, smug. “And hey. Don’t knock it. The internet’s already halfway in love with you both.”
She barely resisted the urge to flip Martin off as he and Kendall scooted out of the door, leaving them with the camera crew to get B-roll.
“The Quickstep,” Holly began, “is like doing algebra on a treadmill while smiling like your bonus cheque depends on it, which, for the record, it does.”
She folded her arms across her chest as she tilted her head, assessing the size of the chaos she’d agreed to choreograph.
“It’s fast. It’s bouncy. It’s designed to humiliate you.
Every step’s supposed to be featherlight, just a whisper on the floor.
No stomping, no dragging, no dead weight.
You hesitate for a second, and the whole thing turns into a TikTok fail compilation. ”
She tipped her chin up. “Your frame has to be locked. Your footwork has to be clean. And if your center wobbles for even a beat, we’re going down like two drunks in a three-legged race.”
Nate raised a brow like that was a challenge and not a genuine hazard warning.
She didn’t let him speak. “Think Fred Astaire on cocaine meets a runaway train with jazz hands. You’re leading, but that doesn’t mean you bulldoze me around the floor like we’re reenacting a bar brawl.
You guide. You make it look effortless while praying to every god in the multiverse that you don’t roll an ankle. ”
She gave him one last look. Sharp, unapologetic, and absolutely daring him to make a joke. “Got it?”
He grinned, all teeth and attitude, and adjusted the back of his baseball cap on his forehead. “Got it. So basically, I have to be hot, fast, light on my feet, and just dominant enough to be palatable for network TV.”
She blinked. “You make it sound like we’re filming a very specific kind of OnlyFans collab.”
He smirked. “Baby, I knew you'd come around.”
“Oh my god.” She shoved his shoulder and turned away before he could see the smile she was absolutely not letting him earn. “Cut that,” she warned the film crew.
They drilled footwork until her calves screamed and his shirt clung to his sweaty chest in ways that personally targeted her.
The quickstep was supposed to be fun and cheeky, but dancing it with Nate felt like an exercise in high-stakes denial.
Every time his palm grazed the base of her shoulder or his thigh brushed hers in a spin, her body lit up like it was auditioning for a different genre entirely.
And sure, they mostly kept it together. Mostly.
Until the break.
He stepped in close while she was sipping water, leaned down like he was about to tell her a secret and said, low and filthy, “If that’s how you fake it, darling... imagine the real thing.”
Her whole body snapped tight. Pulse spiking, knees softening, mouth dry.
She swallowed and blinked. And because her legs felt like linguine and her vagina clearly had a death wish, she threw him a scathing glare and said absolutely nothing.
Just set the water bottle down with surgical precision and walked away like her spine was steel and not about to melt for him.
Holly made it all the way to her bag to pretend-check her phone before she remembered how to breathe again.
And even then, it came out shaky. She’d just barely recovered, heart rate somewhere south of explosive and thighs no longer trembling like they’d seen God, when the door opened.
Chaos entered, wielding a clipboard and an iPhone gimbal.
“Hey guys,” Kendall trilled as she wandered over to them wearing a headset like a halo and heels that could kill a man. “Sorry to interrupt. Sophie wants a few quick behind-the-scenes stills for socials. Just some promo content. Totally candid.”
“Sophie?” Nate asked, looking at Holly.
“Executive Producer,” Holly said as an aside to him before shooting Kendall a look. “So… not candid at all?”
Kendall smiled tightly. “Curated, babe! It’ll be fine. Okay Holly, back against the mirror. Nate, come in close. Maybe one hand on the mirror behind her. Yes, like that,” she sighed, lifting her filming rig. “Hot, but not too hot. Leave room for Jesus, but only the slutty one!”
Nate blinked with an incredulous laugh. “There’s a slutty Jesus?”
“Oh my god, just stand there,” Holly muttered, trying not to laugh. Her back hit the mirror with a soft thud as she adjusted her posture, chest lifted, chin angled. The glass was cool behind her shoulders, but her skin was already flushing.
Nate moved in. Slow. Casual. A man who knew all too well how much space he took up and exactly what he could do with it.
He placed his palm flat against the mirror just beside her head, biceps flexing, cologne-and-sweat combo hitting her square in the trauma response.
He leaned in until her peripheral vision was full of his broad chest and sharp jaw.
Kendall flitted around them like a wedding photographer at a mafia ceremony. “Perfect. Nate, look at her like she’s your next bad decision. Holly, gimme defiance. Power. A little ‘touch me and die’, part ‘I’ll let you anyway.’ Yes, that’s it.”
Click.
Click.
The flash bounced off the mirrors. Holly’s spine stayed straight, her arms at her sides, fists clenched to keep from grabbing his shirt and doing something very unsafe for the brand.
“You good?” Nate murmured, voice low, meant only for her.
“No,” she said sweetly through her teeth. “You’re too close, and I’m going to do something stupid on camera.”
He grinned. Didn’t move. “Like what?”
“Like kneeing you in the balls. Now shut up.”
Kendall gasped like she’d just discovered the holy grail of thirst content. “This is gold. Okay, now Nate, lower your hand to her waist. Just a whisper Yes. And Holly, can you lift your chin just a touch? Like you’re about to say something devastating.”
Oh, she fucking was. She just didn’t know what language it was going to come out in.
Click.
“Okay!” Kendall beamed. “We’re good! These’ll break the internet by lunch tomorrow. Thanks, sexpots!” She vanished out the door before Holly could demand a delete pass.
Nate finally stepped back, but slowly, like peeling off a second skin. Holly didn’t move until the door shut again. Then she shoved both hands into her hair and groaned at the ceiling.
“I hate this show,” she muttered.
“You love this show,” Nate said, smug as sin.
“I love my paycheck.”
He looked at her like he could read the fine print in her sweat. “That all you love?”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t dare. Because she hated him, or at least she had to.
There was no version of her life where getting entangled with a rage-fueled, hypersexualized hockey delinquent ended well.
Nate Eriksson was the kind of man who came with warning labels and trauma flashbacks.
The kind who fucked like a sin and left like a storm.
And she was here to dance. To win. To pay bills, not ride dick. She didn’t need temptation in six-foot-four form with a stupid jawline and hands made for ruining lives. She needed boundaries. Ice. Maybe a taser.
God help her, she was in trouble.
But trouble didn’t matter when your mother was choosing between chemo and rent.
When the hospital bills stacked higher than the choreography notes, and every bonus check meant another week of care.
Holly couldn’t afford feelings. Or distractions.
Or Nate Fucking Eriksson and his abs of mass destruction.
What she needed was the win. The money. The control. Everything else? It could burn.
@ttftokupdates on TikTok:
JUST IN: These were taken through a cracked door on the TTF studio lot today If this is what Holly and Nate are like OFF camera… y’all. We might be looking at our winners and our next PR couple to soft launch via thirst trap.
#hate2hot #stepballchangemyass #quickstepgate
@glitterballtea on Threads:
OK but did anyone ELSE see the way Nate looked at her in that mirror shot??? That's not fake-dating energy. That’s “I’ve memorized the taste of your skin” energy. Holly, give us a sign if you need rescuing. Or don’t. We get it.
#rumbareckoning #hotstepbrothervibes #helpmeidied
@badboyicebrawls on Instagram:
This promo drop is illegal. Nate’s hand on the mirror. Holly’s FACE. The heat radiating off them!! I don’t care if it’s acting or PR or whatever. This is the first time since season 6 that I’ve believed in chemistry again.
#takethefloor #hollyerrikssontruthers #dirtydancingenergy
Mamá
mija i saw your dance you looked beautiful so proud of you i cried a little dont tell your tia she’ll say its menopause nate is very handsome and talented but why does he have the shoulders of a nightclub bouncer or a man who fights for sport is that fashion now does he lift weights for fun or is it just the stress either way he looked at you like you were dinner and dessert and also a religious experience im not saying anything just be safe and stretch after rehearsals love you so much call me when you get a minute x
Holly
Mamá, I love you but you NEED to learn how to split up your texts Call you tonight. Love you x